I was very glad indeed to receive a note from you. I should regret that you came at all; had our acquaintance been to give
just one cry in the world and then return “into the womb of uncreated night”!1 Your next visit to London will be, I hope in milder weather, when I may follow my inclinations without risk of laying myself
up, which Geraldine can tell you, it is mighty easy for me to do. That monday was dreadfully raw and cold, and my throat a little sore; or decidedly I should have been with you “after four-oclock,” as
I rose in the morning fully minded to go.2

Your patronage of Colonel Fitzgibbon, is about as gratifying to me as to himself. Mr C and I have talked about him to all our official, and professedly benevolent friends till our tongues have been wearing smaller in our heads, and with no earthly result or prospect of result, and here
you descend like “a Goddess out of a Machine”3 to benefit him precisely in the way most gratifying to his feelings by buying and circulating his pamphlet4—above all by circulating it—for this Education-Theory is the good old mans hobby which he rides with a sublime superiority to all considerations of profit and loss—and yet he must have, at lowest, bread
and water enough to keep life in him or he could not ride long. It is a shame to our Government—only that our Government is pretty well blasé on shame—that this man who certainly saved Toronto from being burnt by the Rebels and Sir Francis Head from being put to death5—if that indeed were any benefit to the country—should be defrauded of the insignificant reward voluntarily promised him for his services.6 It was to obtain that by personal remonstrance, that he came to England some eighteen months ago, and he is further off obtaining it now than the
first day: for Charles Buller, the only official Man who recognised the injustice done him, and who meant to make a stir on his behalf,7 no longer lives to befriend him or any one— It is a most romantic and touching history poor Fitzgibbons which I will tell
you the first long tete a tete we have together—if it do not appear in print beforehand; for having delivered himself of his darling pamphlet he is now
consoling his lonely hours by writing his Life— And he will do it very well—for he has told me great pieces of it with a power of language quite extraordinary in a man
who commenced as a private soldier with no more education than other Irish peasants—

He promises to bring me the pamphlets tomorrow—but I will not put off writing till they come as I have several engagements
on hand that may take up all my time tomorrow and next day

I returned Mrs Cobden's call yesterday but found her out— Nothing on earth can be more preposterous than the London calling system—unless indeed the avowed end and aim of it be to miss people—every body being only expected to call for every body at the same hours, so every body of course finds every body out— I have trained most of my friends to come to me as soon as possible after breakfast— Will you give my kind remembrance to Mr Schwabe— most truly yours / Jane Carlyle

JWC-JSS [JSSC], [30 Jan.]. MS: NLS 1797.229. Hitherto unpbd. Dated by JWC to JW, [29 Jan.], where JWC had called on Mrs. Cobden “today” and found her out, referred to in this letter as her return of “Mrs Cobden's
call yesterday.”

2. Julie Salis Schwabe had clearly taken to JWC as well. Jewsbury said to JWC, 4 March, that Mrs. Schwabe “gave me a long message to you, which she insisted on my repeating ‘verbatim’; but as I can't, you must
take the substance, which is that she and Mr. [Schwabe] are very anxious that you and Mr. Carlyle should come and stay with
them—that it would do you good” (Ireland 284–85).

4. Probably A Few Observations on Canada, and the Other Provinces of British North America (1849), pbd. by John Ollivier, 59 Pall Mall.

5. He had been instrumental in suppressing the rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada. He had tried to persuade Sir Francis Bond Head (1793–1875; ODNB), the lieut. gov., to take appropriate measures at the outbreak of the insurrection, but Head refused, sending all the regular
troops to Lower Canada to put down a revolt there. Finally, Head appointed FitzGibbon chief of the militia to lead the attack
that routed the rebels approaching Toronto.

6. An Appeal to the People of the Late Province of Upper Canada (Montreal, 1847). As a reward for his services, the two legislative houses of Upper Canada requested, 1838, that FitzGibbon be given a 5,000-acre land grant, but the imperial authorities objected. Like requests were made, 1839 and 1840, but again refused. At last, FitzGibbon was given £1,000, by the legislature of the United Canadas, 1845, a gift of half the total of his debts and less than half the estimated value of the proposed land grant. In vain FitzGibbon
applied to the British govt. for further reward. This pamphlet documented his claim to have saved Upper Canada for the empire.

7. Because of his knowledge of the situation from being in Canada with Lord Durham in 1838 for the inquiry into Canadian govt. after the rebellion.